Can watch in fascination and joy as Beth tips over that crest of pleasure, back arching, legs shaking, breath coming in short gasps. She slowly pulls back her hand and Beth’s hips fall back to the bed, her body going lax as the wave passes.Gwen watches Beth’s eyes flutter back open. She tips her head forward again to meet Gwen’s gaze, eyes heavy-lidded. Gwen smiles and leans down to press kisses to Beth’s face, taking a moment to wipe her hand on the sheets before using both palms to cradle Beth’s jaw.
The smell of her lingers between them and Gwen hums as Beth shifts in her hold to catch her lips in a kiss. Beth seems to regain control of her hands and suddenly they’re everywhere, skimming up and down Gwen’s sides before one slips between her own legs. Gwen nearly falls onto Beth in surprise, a shudder consuming her body, a herald of what’s to come.
Beth smiles against her mouth and uses her other hand to shift herself upward, flipping them slowly until Gwen is pressed beneath her in a full reverse. She squirms against the sheets as Beth does her own study. Her hand is smaller, different; the rhythm, the movement, the feeling of her fingers inside of Gwen is strange and new and exhilarating. Pulsing pleasure lights up in her belly, her legs shaking, brought so close already to the edge by touching Beth and kissing Beth and feeling Beth atop her and inside her and around her.
She tries to prolong it, doesn’t want this to end so soon, but Beth’s finger crooks inside of her, her palm hard against the top of her, and Gwen falls over that cliff of pleasure, tight and pulsing and raw and magnificent. Gwen clutches at Beth’s back, gasping as Beth continues her ministrations. The pleasure lasts, waves crashing upon waves as her hips jerk and her back tenses and her belly clenches over and over until it’s so much she has to push Beth’s hand away.
She blinks her eyes open only in time to see Beth’s fingers slide from her mouth. She groans at the very thought—to havemissed it, for it to have happened. The smell of them mingles all around and Gwen tries to come back to herself, to summon romantic words, something, anything.
All she manages is “Holy hell.”
Beth snorts and falls down onto her, pressing a smacking kiss to her lips before cuddling into her, her face buried in Gwen’s neck, legs laced between hers. Gwen breathes her in, wrapping her still-tingling arms about her back, hands splayed wide against her shoulders.
“That was wondrous,” Beth whispers, her lips brushing Gwen’s pulse.
It sends yet another shudder through her and Gwen wonders how anyone ever leaves their bed, if this is what it is to know someone else, to give and receive pleasure, to kiss and squirm and sigh. Why do they leave at all? Why not simply live like this forever?
“I love you” slips from her tongue.
Both of them still and Gwen clenches her eyes shut, mortified.
She does, she thinks, love Beth. How could she not, after what they’ve just done, after how it just felt, after how it feels now to lie with her here, skin cooling, pulse calming? When Beth is the first person she wants to speak to, first person she wants to see, and whose smile made her heart flutter long before they kissed? And now—the look Beth gives Gwen as she arches up, propping herself up with her arms on either side of Gwen’s head—it makes Gwen’s stomach flip, her toes curl.
“I love you too,” Beth whispers, leaning down to press her forehead to Gwen’s. “I want to stay right here forever.”
Gwen grins and leans up to catch her lips, cradling her facebetween her palms, content to do just that. The morning will come, with its light and its reality. But now, here in the cocoon of her bed, in their love, with nothing between them, is a perfection she’s never known, and she intends to savor it for as long as she can.
Chapter Fifteen
Beth
“Stop it,” Beth says, laughing. Gwen continues pressing up behind her, lips skating kisses along her throat, hands on her hips, as Beth tries to finish her hair. “This is hard enough without you distracting me.”
Gwen snorts and pulls back, batting Beth’s hands away to place the final pins to keep her sleep-and-other-activities-mussed hair artfully piled on top of her head. Gwen’s hands are gentle and precise, doing an admirable job that just makes Beth want to push her back down to the bed. But then they’d rub the makeup hiding their tired eyes into Gwen’s white sheets. She already feels strange enough that they’ll be laundered as they are, smelling of a mix of the two of them.
“There,” Gwen announces, stepping around her to look at her hair straight on. “Perfectly acceptable.”
Beth rolls her eyes and reaches up to adjust Gwen’s hair as well. Her blond curls have better recovered from their tousle, but both of them still look windswept. Hopefully Mother and Lord Havenfort won’t ask questions. They can simply assume Gwen and Beth were up talking all night. Which they were, of a sort, in between all of the... decidedly not talking.
Beth feels herself blush, images of the previous evening flitting across her mind, hot and joyful and heady.
“Stop it.”
“Stop what?” Beth asks, blinking the thoughts away before she meets Gwen’s eyes.
“Thinking about last night.”
Beth huffs, noting the flush climbing Gwen’s neck as well. “You stop.”
Gwen laughs and pulls her in for a kiss. Beth squeaks, a little ungainly in her hoop after an evening in nothing but her skin. And though it’s less than they were able to have in bed, it’s still lovely, Gwen’s hands on her cheeks, her hands gripping at Gwen’s skirts. Gwen’s mouth is hot against Beth’s and she thinks maybe they should skip breakfast altogether, pretend to have a lie-in. Maybe actually have a—
“Lady Demeroven has arrived.”
They jump apart at the firm rap on the door. Beth presses her hands to her cheeks, as if someone could tell just by looking at her what they’ve been doing. But the door doesn’t open, and she hears footsteps retreating down the hall.
“I guess,” Gwen starts.
“Right,” Beth agrees, dropping her hands and forcing her shoulders down.
